I think that this would be the perfect post to get this community going.

Under my direction as admin of Hexbear I restructured the internal admin/moderator order. A large part of this restructure was to shift the majority of the site decisions to a larger collective of people dedicated to the site.

At the time I also reorganized the new moderator protocol to make it easier for new mods to be added and for those mods to have the power to appoint mods at will based on a vouching system. Only moderators who submitted an application were invited to an off-site moderation discussion room.

This room is where the proposals for the site were made, discussed, and voted upon. After a proposal was finished I would often write up a statement and post it for feedback and approval so that the entire process from proposal to post had as many opportunities as possible for the moderators to give input or present changes.

In light of the most recent decision I am taking responsibility as I established this decision-making process, I drafted the announcement post, I collected and edited the followup statement.

It is clear to me that I was mistaken in the effectiveness of this approach and that a more transparent approach is needed. As well as, creating more opportunities for user input need to be added.

I am more than happy to return to the admin team if the users want me to do so, but I am stepping away from all decision-making at an admin level. I will continue to be involved with Hexbear in any capacity I can and will not be leaving as a user.

Chapo.chat/Hexbear was never my project nor did I ever intend to take it over. My hope was to keep it going another day so the people that spent hours developing, coordinating, organizing, and educating on this platform could continue to do so. Everyone that has donated to mutual aid, organized fundraisers, wrote effort posts, and bad posts have done just as much if not more than I have.

I have faith in all the other admins both new and old to keep this place going and while I am happy to give my thoughts on any aspect of the site I think the best way to self-crit is to accept my mistakes and to let the other admins take the lead.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me kind comments and to those that continuously strive to make this place better.

  • mkultrawide [any]
    ·
    3 days ago

    I don't have a ton of interaction with you (that I am aware of), and I missed the party on this one since I was touching grass or something like that, but right now it sounds like you are one of the only admins who for sure should be staying the in decision making loop. Mistakes happen when running any organization, it's unavoidable. I have seen the exact mistake you made (making changes to the site without consulting the wider userbase) so many times over the years. I've even done it once or twice myself. It's one of the most common mistakes made by admins/mods. You have done a good job of holding yourself accountable, which is #1 what a good admin/mod should be doing and #2 is more than I can say for a lot of your "colleagues". I don't think should be removing yourself from the decision making process.

    • CARCOSA [they/them]A
      ·
      3 days ago

      Thank you for the words of advice and support. I will not be stepping down, and our next priority is to change the decision-making process to make it more transparent and increase user participation.